


The Tree of Knowledge

by Philosopher_King



Series: Whatever is done from love [2]
Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Angst and Porn, Biblical References, Demisexual Loki, First Time, Hand Jobs, Historical References, M/M, Nietzschean Loki, Philosophy, Porn with Feelings, Pre-Canon, References to Depression, Sibling Incest, loki is a nerd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-10
Updated: 2016-03-10
Packaged: 2018-05-25 20:30:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6209017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philosopher_King/pseuds/Philosopher_King
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"Loki kissed me. What in Hel was that about?</i> was the first thought that entered Thor’s mind when he woke up.  <i>And I kissed him back."</i></p><p>The day after Loki and Thor got stoned together and Loki kissed Thor -- purportedly just to prove a philosophical point -- Thor looks for an explanation from his evasive brother, and comes to realize that his own feelings for Loki are not what he had thought they were.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tree of Knowledge

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to my fic [Desert Flowers](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5729293), and I suspect it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense if you haven't read that, but you're welcome to try. All of my fics take place in the same universe/timeline, and my version of Loki is a very peculiar and specific one, who goes down to Midgard once or twice a century to see how things are going and is very into Midgardian philosophy. So he makes a lot of references that Thor doesn't understand, and quotes Nietzsche a lot (mostly just because I am a grad student writing a dissertation on Nietzsche and he's on the brain most of the time).

_Loki kissed me.  What in Hel was that about?_ was the first thought that entered Thor’s mind when he woke up.  _And I kissed him back._

As he rose, washed, and hurriedly dressed, Thor could think of nothing else.  _Loki kissed me._ The words ran through his head over and over, like a ritual chant.  _And I kissed him back.  What in Hel was that about?_

As soon as he was dressed, Thor left his chambers, went just a few paces down the corridor, and knocked on the door to Loki’s chambers, which were adjacent to his.  There was no answer.  He knocked again, louder and more urgently, and called, “Loki?”  Still nothing.

Thor thought it was unlikely that Loki had risen very much earlier than he had, considering how late they had both been awake the night before, and figured that he had gone to break his fast in their mother’s rooms rather than calling for breakfast to be brought to his own rooms.  Thor headed in that direction as well; he knew that he could not bring up what he wanted to speak about in their mother’s presence, but perhaps he could catch Loki as they were on their way out.

As he approached Frigga’s rooms, Thor could see through the open arcaded hallway that she and Loki were breakfasting in her gardens.  Frigga was facing him, while he could see only Loki’s back.  “Thor!” his mother said warmly, rising to welcome him.  Loki turned and gave him an unreadable look, but did not stand.  “I was not expecting you,” Frigga continued.

Thor went to her and kissed her cheek.  “I thought I might surprise you, but I see you already have company,” he said.  His voice sounded false to himself; he was not accustomed to lying.  He hoped it was only his own nervousness that made him self-conscious, and that she would notice nothing amiss.

“Please, sit,” Frigga said, pulling out the chair to her left.  “There is plenty of food.”  It was true: the table was abundantly laden with pastries, bread, cheese, and fruit.  The kitchens were always generous with the meals they served to the royal family.  But Thor knew none of it would go to waste, since the staff got to take home the plentiful leftovers.

“And look, Loki brought me something from Midgard,” Frigga said fondly, raising a stoneware cup so that Thor could see something inside: a small cloth pouch full of some soggy brown matter.

“What is it?” Thor asked, peering at it and trying to make out what the contents were.

“Tea,” Loki said mildly.  Thor looked up at him, and thought he was smirking slightly.  ‘Tea,’ he had said the night before, was a euphemism for cannabis; Thor sincerely hoped that it was, in fact, tea in Frigga’s cup.

“Someone thought to put enough of it for just one cup in these little permeable bags,” Frigga said, sounding delighted.  “Isn’t that ingenious?  You can’t discount Midgardians,” she laughed, an amused look in her eyes.  “They haven’t figured out space travel yet, and they’re just now getting around to electricity, but they _can_ invent more convenient ways to package tea.”

As if from nowhere, a servant brought Thor his own plate and stoneware cup; Frigga opened a small wooden box and handed Thor a cloth bag like the one she’d had in her cup, though the leaves inside were still dry and slightly greenish.  He dropped it into his own cup, and Frigga poured water over it from a kettle resting on a stand over an enchanted flame that, no doubt, either she or Loki had ignited.  As Thor watched, the cloth pouch floated to the top and tendrils of brown drifted out of it to swirl through the water.  “Huh,” he said, mildly impressed.

“Loki was telling me all about his travels in Midgard,” Frigga informed him.  “I don’t suppose you’ve had a chance to hear about them yet?”

“We spoke a bit about it last night,” Thor said hesitantly, looking over at Loki.  Loki’s face was as impenetrable as ever.

“Yes, I told him of the Great War and its aftermath,” Loki confirmed.

“It seems the other thing Midgardians are particularly inventive about, aside from tea packaging, is coming up with more efficient ways to kill each other,” Frigga said darkly.

“And reasons for killing each other,” Loki added dryly.  “They have an inexhaustible imagination for those.”

Thor smiled weakly, while trying to look sad and concerned about the state of Midgardian politics.  Loki and Frigga had a rapport, a way of engaging each other in clever patter, that sometimes left him feeling like a clumsy intruder.  And on top of that, today of all days he simply could not bring himself to care about Midgardian wars.

“I’m afraid I must be off, mother, brother,” said Loki, rising and nodding to each of them in turn.  “There’s something I wanted to find in the library before the Council meeting later today.”

“Ah, but it seems as if you only just got here!” Frigga lamented, glancing at the half of a roll and the mostly uneaten pear left on Loki’s plate.  Thor strongly suspected that Loki was running away from talking to him.  “I do hope you’ll have a chance soon to regale me with more tales of your Midgardian adventures,” she said with a humorous quirk of her lips.

“I most heartily look forward to it,” said Loki with an identical mouth-quirk, raising their mother’s hand to his lips to kiss it.  It was at moments like these that Thor could really see that Loki was his mother’s son: while their coloring and facial structure looked nothing alike, they shared all the same mannerisms, and the same sly sense of humor.

Thor watched Loki go, feeling frustrated and helpless.  He couldn’t very well follow him now, since he had claimed to be coming to visit his mother.  Now that he was here, he might as well eat breakfast, at least.  He would try to track Loki down in the library afterward.  Thor chatted absentmindedly with Frigga as he ate and they both sipped their tea (it was, in fact, tea), and he often found his eyes straying in the direction toward which Loki had departed.

Frigga noticed that he was not giving the conversation his full attention.  “Is something the matter, Thor?” she asked kindly.

“What?” he asked, startled out of his thoughts (about how long Loki might stay in the library, where he might go afterward, whether he had even been telling the truth about where he was going…).

“You seem a bit distracted,” she said gently, an amused smile playing around her lips.

There was no point in denying it.  “I… I had almost forgotten about the Council meeting today.  I was trying to remember whether there was anything important on the agenda that I had forgotten to read up on.”  That lie didn’t ring quite as false as the previous one, Thor thought.  Maybe it only took practice.

“Perhaps you should join Loki in the library when you’re finished with breakfast, then,” Frigga suggested mildly.  Thor’s stomach clenched, for no good reason.  He was being ridiculous; there was no chance at all that she could know the true explanation for his restlessness.

“Yes, that’s a good idea,” he said gratefully.  At least it gave him an excuse not to linger.

As soon as he had finished eating, and bade his mother a courteous farewell, Thor rushed to the library.  The librarian looked shocked to see him.  He immediately made for the table where Loki usually worked; while there was a pile of books and papers filled with Loki’s distinctive cramped handwriting, Loki was not there.  Next, Thor tried the window seat toward the back of the library where Loki liked to sit and read if he did not need to spread his work out on a table.  He was not there either, though a slight indent in the cushion suggested that he had left only recently.

Thor hurried out again, which seemed to further puzzle the librarian.  The next place he tried was Loki’s chambers, again; he knocked even more forcefully and impatiently than before, shouting, “Damn it, Loki, you can’t run away from me forever!”  The continuing silence from within, and an alarmed look from a passing servant, persuaded Thor to give up for the time being.

He decided to go to the training yards to pass the time, and take out some of his frustration, before the Council meeting.  In the worst case, he could corner Loki after the meeting was over, though it would be a very long and patience-trying meeting if he had to wait until then.  And maybe, he thought (though it seemed a remote possibility), he would find Loki at the training yards.

The yards were relatively deserted, as it was still morning, and the classes to train the young boys who would grow up to be Asgard’s warriors did not take place until the afternoon.  In the morning it was only warriors who were off duty and wished to practice, or the occasional drill for the palace guards; as it was peacetime, no official military exercises were going on.  Thor scanned the small courts used for individual sparring matches, looking to see if anyone was loitering about, waiting for a partner to become available… and then he spotted Loki.

He was engaged in a quarterstaff bout with a brown-skinned soldier Thor did not know.  As it was a warm day, and they expected to sweat, they had both taken off their shirts—which was entirely normal, of course, but Thor found it suddenly very discomfiting.  He turned away, trying not to let his attention linger, entirely inappropriately, on the lean lines of Loki’s—his _brother’s—_ body, or the elegant precision and fluid grace of his movements.  But then he realized that he was going to have to look at Loki if he wanted to approach him to talk to him.

Thor steeled himself and walked down to the court where Loki was sparring.  “Loki!” he called when he was within earshot.  “I need to speak with you.”

“I’m a bit busy at the moment, as you may have noticed,” Loki said, his tone light and only mildly annoyed, not taking his eyes off his sparring partner.

“When you are finished, then,” Thor said, trying to make his voice sound stern.

“Yes, of course,” Loki replied, sounding distracted as he parried an attack from his opponent.

Thor found himself faced with something of a dilemma: he did not really wish to stand there and watch Loki fight shirtless, all the while trying to smother his distracting, inappropriate thoughts; but he feared that if he wandered away, perhaps to enter into a sparring match of his own, Loki would slip away while his attention was occupied.

He resolved his dilemma by letting his gaze wander over the nearby courts, to watch the other bouts going on.  He nodded at a soldier he knew, who was taking a brief rest from a fencing match to wipe the sweat and dirt off his face, and the soldier gave him an impromptu salute with the towel.  He only occasionally allowed himself to glance back at Loki, and then only to see whether his match seemed to be winding down.

At last, after Loki had disarmed his sparring partner and aimed the end of his staff at his throat, the soldier indicated that he had somewhere else he needed to be and excused himself.  Loki grabbed a towel that he had thrown over the railing around the practice court and, wiping the sweat from his face and hair with it, began to head toward the small bathing and changing house adjoining the soldiers’ barracks.  Thor fell into step with him, throwing him a glare every now and then to warn him not to try to escape.

They entered the bathhouse, whose dim light came only from the small windows that lined the walls just below the ceiling.  Thor was glad to see that they were the only ones there.  Loki dropped his sweat-soaked towel into a basket by the door, picked up a clean one from a shelf above the basket, and headed for the row of copper taps along one of the walls, which ran into one long stone trough.  Thor hung back, leaning against the wall beside the door.

“We need to talk,” he said sternly, as Loki turned on one of the taps and splashed water onto his face.

“Oh?  What about?” Loki asked casually, not bothering to turn around.  He had picked up one of the bars of soap that lay at intervals along the shelf above the taps, and began washing under his arms.

Thor looked away, his face feeling hot.  “You know perfectly well.”

“On the contrary, I do not,” Loki replied coolly, raising his voice slightly to be heard over the running water.  “I only _act_ as if I know everything.”

Thor cleared his throat uncomfortably.  “We need to talk about what happened last night.”

Loki chuckled dryly.  “If you want me to put you in touch with my marijuana dealer, it may be a bit complicated.  You need to come through the proper intermediaries so that he can be sure you’re not a government agent…”

“Don’t play the fool, Loki,” Thor snapped.  “It doesn’t become you.”

Finally Loki turned around to face Thor, while drying himself off with the towel; Thor looked directly into his eyes, if only to avoid looking anywhere else.  “No, it’s really more your role, isn’t it?” Loki mused with a sly smile playing about his lips.  “The Fool; the Everyman.  I’m much better suited to play the Serpent.”

“You’re speaking in riddles,” Thor said tightly.

“Yes, precisely.”  Loki grinned, and tossed his damp towel into the basket as well.  “You don’t know what a morality play is, do you?”

“A _what?”_ Was this another Midgardian invention?  Loki had been getting some strange ideas about morality from Midgard lately…

Loki sighed.  “Such a pity.  Well, what is it you wanted to talk to me about?”  He walked through another doorway into the changing room, where he had stowed the rest of his clothing, and Thor followed him.

“You know I can’t say it here,” Thor muttered, jerking his head back toward the bathing room, where the sound of jovial voices and laughter indicated that some other warriors had come in.

Loki paused with his arms in the sleeves of his shirt, before pulling it over his head, and raised his eyebrows.  “You do know we’re expected at a Council meeting in a matter of minutes?”

“We will speak afterward,” Thor said sternly.  “And you will _not_ sneak away from me this time,” he added, pointing a warning finger at Loki (which he could see once he had pulled his head through his shirt).

“Very well, I will not,” Loki said archly, pulling his tunic on over his shirt.  “Now, though, we should probably go to the Council meeting.”  He fastened on his vambraces, picked up his leather overcoat, and started walking while still putting it on.

Thor caught up with him and then walked beside him through the halls, quietly fuming.  This was going to be the longest meeting of Asgard’s High Council that he had ever sat through—and he had sat through some _interminable_ Council meetings.

Thor was barely listening as some elderly Councilmen droned on about harvests and taxes and migration from the countryside to the city.  His attention was caught when Frigga (one of few queens of Asgard ever to sit upon the Council; but she would have her opinions heard, precedent be damned) called upon Loki to give a report of his latest travels in Midgard.  Loki spoke of the Great War and its consequences, of the splintering of empires into nation-states and the movement toward independent sovereignty for former imperial possessions, of votes for women and the collapse of feudal caste systems, of secularization and motorcars and the march of science and technology.  _Are you going to tell them about nihilism and hedonism and the loosening of sexual mores?_ Thor thought at him, glaring across the table as if Loki could hear his thoughts.  _About jazz clubs and marijuana and Berlin’s_ very _interesting night life?_

The meeting ran through the midday meal.  Servants brought plates piled high with bread, cold meat, cheese, and fruit from the kitchens and set them out on sideboards against the walls of the Council chamber, along with flagons of mead and water.  A brief halt was called to the proceedings so that the councilors could get food and drink.  Thor poured a generous helping of mead into his goblet; Loki, he noticed, took only water.  _You smug stone-cold bastard,_ he thought.  _You’re enjoying this._

As the meeting dragged on, Thor refilled his goblet twice more.  He was never called upon to speak, Norns be praised; he even voluntarily expressed an opinion once (on a question about the size of Asgard’s standing army) so that he would not be suspected of not paying attention.  Perhaps he only imagined it, but he thought Loki directed an amused look at him when he spoke.

Finally the meeting was over.  Thor all but dashed around the table to where Loki sat, grabbed his arm (as if they were taking a companionable stroll, of course), and steered him out of the Council chamber toward their own rooms.

“You really think we need a _bigger_ standing army?” Loki asked with mild incredulity as they walked.

“I don’t know, and I don’t really care right now, either,” Thor said shortly.  “It was what Father would expect me to say.”

“You _are_ in quite a state, aren’t you?” Loki laughed.  Thor just blew some air impatiently out his nose and disdained to reply.

When they reached Thor’s rooms, he wrenched the door open and practically shoved Loki inside.  As soon as he heard the door slam shut, he burst out, “You kissed me.  What in Hel was that about?”  _And I kissed back,_ his mind added, recalling the morning’s litany.

Loki laughed, trying to sound casual.  “Is _that_ what you’ve been so bothered about all day?”  Thor growled at him inarticulately.  “I was illustrating a point.”

“You could have illustrated it some other way,” Thor pointed out angrily.

“Ah, but this way certainly got your attention, didn’t it?” Loki said with a mischievous grin.

“I don’t even remember what you were trying to prove!”

“Come, now, brother.  Yes you do,” Loki coaxed him sweetly.

“I—”  Thor tried to think back to the conversation itself, and to push aside the memory of Loki’s lips on his, Loki’s tongue oh-so-cautiously exploring his mouth, Loki’s knee pressed against his thigh as he leaned over him.  “It was something about aesthetics and morality.  That—that what we think is right or wrong is largely a matter of custom, or taste, not reason.”

“Well, then, it appears the point was made,” Loki said with a tone of playful triumph.

“That can’t be the only reason why you did it,” Thor insisted doggedly.

“Can’t it?”

“You did it because you wanted to.”

“Well, yes,” Loki said with exaggerated patience, as if Thor were a slow child.  “I don’t generally do things that I don’t want to do.”

“You’re playing the fool again,” Thor growled.

“What you mean to say,” Loki said with a pointed, searching, faintly mocking gaze, “is that I did it because I want _you.”_

Upon hearing it put so bluntly, Thor felt his face grow hot—but only partly with embarrassment.  “Do you?” he asked hoarsely.

Loki looked taken aback; it seemed he had expected Thor to back off in shame rather than putting the question to him directly.  “I—I hardly know how to answer that.”  His hastily adopted air of indignation struck Thor as flimsy; Loki’s well-practiced powers of dissimulation were failing him.

“You could try answering honestly,” Thor said harshly.

Loki’s eyes widened.  He was used to the whispers around court calling him a liar, but not to having it so plainly implied right to his face, and certainly not by Thor.  Thor almost regretted it, seeing the flash of hurt in those clear green eyes; but Loki’s guard was down, and that was what he had wanted.

“I—” Loki began again, looking lost.

Thor did not often call Loki’s bluffs.  He _was_ a very good liar: he could make what he said sound so convincing that Thor would doubt his own memory, his own senses, even with the knowledge that Loki had deceived him in the past.  But now Loki’s confident façade was crumbling; his card-player’s mask was slipping.  The stakes were high: Thor was risking much, but he had much to win.  Perhaps it was only the mead that made him so bold; but whatever the cause, he called Loki’s bluff, and went all in.  He rushed forward, grabbed Loki by the shoulders, and kissed him hard.

Before last night, Thor would never have acknowledged feeling this way about Loki.  He had never thought much about why his initial puzzlement about Loki’s continued celibacy over the centuries had started to turn into something like relief—relief when anything that resembled a courtship was revealed simply to be friendship, or ended with the obvious disappointment of the other party.  If Thor had examined it at all, he would have said it was a lingering protectiveness of his little brother, a desire never to see him suffer the pains of failed love.  And the thrill he felt deep in his stomach when he watched Loki fight—when he saw the dancer-like grace with which he wielded a staff, the slight ripple of lean muscle under his fair skin telling of his tightly controlled power; when he watched Loki throw his knives, his movements smooth and seamless as if the blade, flying swift and true to its mark, were an extension of his arm, his dance become a dance of death—if Thor had asked himself about that, he would have said it was only a swell of pride at seeing his little brother become a strong, accomplished warrior, a force to be reckoned with in the training yards or on the battlefield.  But now it had become clear that it was not only an older brother’s pride and protectiveness that he felt; that the strange fascination with which he watched Loki’s graceful movements, and the twinges of jealousy he felt at the thought of Loki taking a lover, bespoke something darker, deeper—something entirely unsuited to the relationship between brothers, but no less powerful for that.

Thor had wanted women before, and had them, too, but he had never wanted with the same intense hunger he felt now, had never kissed with this fierce and desperate need.  Something about the fact that this was his _brother—_ whom he knew better than anyone, and had for almost all of his millennium-long life; with whom he had played and quarreled as a child; beside whom he had fought as a man and a warrior, whom he had trusted with his life more times than he could count—sharpened his desire, in spite of (or perhaps because of) his doubt and guilt and shame.  _That adrenaline-intoxicated point where nausea and hunger meet._ And Loki must have felt the same hunger, because he kissed back without hesitation, his tongue meeting Thor’s with the same aggressive demand, his teeth grasping at Thor’s lip as possessively as Thor’s did at his.

But then, suddenly, Loki pulled away, backed up a few steps, and looked at Thor with an expression of horror.  “We can’t,” he said; it came out a hoarse whisper.  “We can’t.”

“Why not?” Thor asked, his voice rough with desire.  “Don’t you believe what you said last night, about the morality of custom?  That the things it tells us are wrong may not _truly_ be wrong?”

“Of course I believe it,” Loki said testily.  “But your future subjects very likely do not.  What do you imagine their reaction would be?”

“What does it matter what they think?” Thor asked, feeling reckless.

“Oh, it matters a great deal.  That we are princes does not place us above the law, including the law of custom.  On the contrary, it means that we are always visible to those who might condemn us, and always vulnerable to their—possibly violent—disapproval.”

“Can’t we keep it a secret?” Thor pressed.

“We could try,” Loki answered, his eyes full of pity and pain and longing.  “But how long would we succeed?  How long until our parents, or our friends, notice something amiss?  Or Heimdall chances to turn his gaze to us at the wrong moment?”

Thor flinched; he had not thought of Heimdall.  What if he had seen them already?

Loki perceived Thor’s alarm and gave a small dry smile.  “You needn’t panic; I’ve been casting a minor light-deflecting and sound-canceling illusion to keep Heimdall from seeing or hearing anything untoward.  But what happens if I forget to cast it sometime?  Or if the illusion slips?”

“We’ll be careful,” Thor insisted; but he could hear the hopelessness in his own voice.

“We could never be careful enough,” Loki replied, and there was an ache in his voice as well.  “We would only need to make one mistake, and then…”

“We won’t,” Thor cut in, low, urgent.  He stepped forward, grasped Loki’s shoulders again, and kissed him again, just as hungrily as before, but with less violence.  All of Loki’s muscles were tense with conflicted anxiety, Thor could feel as he let his hands slide down Loki’s arms, then up the length of his back; but then suddenly, as he gave a soft moan that Thor felt as much as heard, his whole body relaxed, as if something inside him had melted.  He kissed inexpertly, naively, exerting too much pressure, more inclined to use his teeth than his tongue, but Thor hardly minded.  _He will have time to learn,_ he thought, as if wishing could make it so.

When they broke apart again, Loki’s body was still limp, his weight partly resting against Thor’s firm grip on his back in such a way that Thor feared Loki might collapse if he let go.  His face was a study in painful contradictions: hope and fear, desire and dread, joy and despair warred in his wide eyes, his creased brow, the tight line of his mouth.  Thor carefully moved one hand to run his thumb over the slim curve of Loki’s lips, as if hoping to smooth away the distraught frown.

When he was confident that Loki’s legs could support his own weight, Thor moved his other hand to Loki’s face, and with his fingers he traced the contours that, he thought, he would know by touch even if he were to go blind: the sharp edges of his jaw; the high, prominent arch of his cheekbones; the deep, weary hollows around his eyes; the long slender line of his nose, with that distinctive convex curve of bone just under the bridge.  Loki, he knew, had always been self-conscious about his nose: like his black hair, the length and shape of his nose set him apart from the rest of his family; and on top of that, Loki grumbled, it made him think of the long hooked noses in storybook illustrations of Frost Giants.  Thor’s thumb lingered on that bony arch, trying to tell Loki silently, through his touch, that he loved it as much as he loved the rest of him.

Loki closed his eyes while Thor ran his hands over the lines of his face, but his anguish was still written in the little shadows and twitches of muscle in his forehead.  His breathing was quick and shallow, and hitched slightly before he whispered again, “We can’t.  We can’t.”

“Do you want me to stop?” Thor asked quietly, and took his hands away from Loki’s face.

Loki opened his eyes again; usually their pale crystal green and guarded gaze made Thor think of a deep lake hidden under a layer of ice, but now the ice had broken and a storm of feeling roiled the surface.  “No,” he said uncertainly.  Then, with another hitching breath, “Yes.”  And again, “No.”

“If you do not wish me to, I will not touch you again,” Thor promised, his voice low and gentle.

Loki bit his lip and furrowed his brow.  An internal debate was being waged behind his eyes, but through it shone a plea—perhaps for someone, something to tell him what to do; for Thor to make the decision for him.  Now he reached out a cautious hand to touch Thor’s face in his turn, running his fingers lightly over the plane of his cheek, briefly cupping his hand around Thor’s jaw and stroking the rough grain of his beard with his thumb, tracing the line of his nose as Thor had traced his, lingering at the little concave dip where it started to turn up at the end—almost the inverse of his own.

“You’re so… perfect,” he said; and beneath the tone of wonder, Thor thought he perceived a note of bitterness, even anger.

“So are you,” Thor assured him with all the firmness and warmth he could hold in his voice.

Loki’s laugh was short and not entirely pleasant, shaded as it was with bitterness and sorrow.  “How can we both be perfect when we are so very different?  There can only be one most perfect being, one _ens realissimum,_ the one with all of the perfections; and any quality that he does not possess can only be negative, a privation, a deficiency in reality.”

“What…?”  This sounded like more obscure philosophical talk, probably some Midgardian nonsense again; but Thor found it oddly charming when Loki started saying these foreign words that had meaning only for him.  He tried his best to make sense of them.  “I don’t see why two people couldn’t be perfect in different ways.  They might have complementary strengths, complementary personalities.  And perhaps no one person could have all of their qualities, but the two might… balance each other, when they are together.  Even if they do fight sometimes,” Thor added with a lopsided smile.

Loki returned the smile, still sad but a little hopeful as well.  “So you, like Kant, believe in real oppositions?”

Thor sighed, exasperated.  “Loki, I don’t…”

“Never mind,” Loki cut in hurriedly, with some genuine amusement in his eyes.  “So we are complementary, but not actually two halves of one whole?  I think I can assent to that.”

“You are too much yourself to be part of anyone else,” Thor remarked fondly, placing a hand behind Loki’s neck in his habitual gesture of affection, but then letting his thumb reach up to brush over Loki’s cheek again.  He could feel Loki lean into his touch almost involuntarily.

Then Thor moved his hand down to grip the edge of Loki’s overcoat, at the place where his neck met his shoulder.  “May I?” he asked softly.

Loki nodded, trembling slightly.  His eyes met Thor’s as Thor gently pulled the coat off, sliding it over Loki’s shoulders and down his arms to fall at his feet.  Loki’s pupils had grown wide with desire, and they made the color of his eyes look darker: the shield of ice over the surface of the lake was gone, and now Thor felt as if he was finally seeing into its calm depths.  Thor reached over to unlace Loki’s tunic at the side, but it was too complicated for him to remove without significant help from Loki.  Thor looked at him expectantly, and he laughed, breaking the quiet solemnity of the moment.  He unbuckled and shed his vambraces, then pulled off the tunic and the high-collared shirt he wore under it, and stood bare-chested, as before.  He shivered, but Thor did not think it was from cold.

Thor’s clothing was far easier to remove, since today he wore only a sleeveless black leather tunic, adorned with silver plating that mimicked the lines of his armor.  Loki reached out to unlace Thor’s tunic at the side, and they both helped to pull it off him.  Loki’s fingers followed the stark lines of his muscles with something like reverence.  Of course they had seen each other shirtless before, even fully naked, but it had never held the significance it did now; there had never been this electrical charge in the air between them—which was not only metaphorical, Thor realized when he heard a loud rumble of thunder outside.

Loki jumped slightly, then laughed, when he heard the thunder.  “I don’t suppose you could learn to keep a handle on _that,”_ he said wryly.

“Perhaps,” said Thor, “but I don’t think I would want to.”  He reached across the distance between them to mirror Loki’s gesture, tracing the subtle lines that bone and muscle engraved on his body.  Loki shuddered at the light touch, but did not move away.  “No one but us would know what it signified; and I would want you to hear it.”

The fear was slowly draining from Loki’s eyes, leaving only the hope, the joy, a strange gratitude, and a deep bittersweet pain—regret, perhaps, that it had taken them so long to realize the desire they shared; perhaps a sorrowful knowledge that this could not lead any farther, that this evening must be an end as well as a beginning.  They stood there in the dim window-lit vestibule to Thor’s chambers, each reaching out to explore the other’s body—almost chastely, by tacit agreement keeping their hands above the other’s waist, questing after the pleasure of knowledge rather than any more straightforwardly physical pleasure.  Thor admired the contrast of the golden skin of his arm against the pallor of Loki’s arm, stretched out alongside it, his sun-browned hand against the ivory skin of Loki’s chest.  It had been said to them often (sometimes in contests of improvised poetry at feasts) that they were like day and night, sun and moon; but now at last Thor could _see_ it, and could see the beauty in it.

Their eyes met; then lightning flashed blindingly outside the window, and all at once their cautiously exploring hands became possessive, clutching at each other hard enough that Loki’s nails would leave welts and Thor’s fingers might leave bruises, drawing each other close into another ferociously needy kiss.  Their hands were now straying to each other’s hips, pulling clumsily at the waistbands of trousers; Thor slid his hands beneath Loki’s trousers to spread his palms over the gentle curve of his ass; Loki started fumbling with the laces at the front of Thor’s trousers; and then they stumbled together through the half-open door into Thor’s bedchamber, Thor using Loki’s back to push the door the rest of the way open, and collapsed onto the bed, Loki lying on his back and Thor kneeling over him.  Somehow they managed to kick their boots off; then Loki scooted awkwardly on his elbows toward the headboard and Thor followed him, not letting their lips part for longer than it took to draw breath.

At last Loki managed to undo the laces on Thor’s trousers and push them down, and he took Thor’s already fully hard cock into his hand and began to stroke it, running his thumb through the ample prespend leaking from the tip and using that to smooth the movement down its length.  Thor groaned at the jolt of pleasure, and then he, too, pulled Loki’s trousers down below his ass—he thought he might have broken some of the laces rather than successfully untying them—and took hold of his length in turn, folding his palm gently around the head and working it smoothly and swiftly down and back up, then again…

Loki gasped sharply, his back stiffened, and the hand on Thor’s cock fell out of its rhythm, then lost its grip entirely.  “What’s wrong?” Thor asked worriedly, taking his hand away as well, reaching up to stroke the side of Loki’s face soothingly.

Loki was breathing hard, almost raggedly, and his brow was furrowed in confusion bordering on distress.  “I—I’ve never—no one has ever… touched me that way, and it feels… strange.”

Thor might have found it laughable that at his age—almost a millennium old, long since a man, and a skilled and experienced warrior besides—Loki had never been touched by another; but he also knew that Loki was unusual in the infrequency and selectiveness of his desire.  “It is rather different from touching yourself,” Thor said gently.  “More intense, certainly.  But once you grow used to it, it can be much, much better.”

“And I only very rarely touch myself,” Loki muttered, his face flushing with embarrassment (along with, Thor supposed, some other feelings).

Thor kept stroking his face, his hair, trying to make him feel safe and comfortable, but from the still-troubled expression on Loki’s face, he began to suspect that the show of tenderness was instead making him nervous.  “What would you like me to do?” asked Thor.

“I—I don’t—”  Loki sat up straighter against the pillows, distancing himself from Thor’s attentions in the process; Thor found himself kneeling upright between Loki’s legs.  The momentum, the sense of urgency, was slipping away and Loki’s doubts were returning.  “We shouldn’t do this.  I should go.”

“Is that truly what you want?” Thor asked, the ache of loss and regret and forlorn hope creeping into his chest.

Loki sighed.  “We will never be able to hold ourselves back, no matter how many reasons we can think of why we should not do this.”

“No,” Thor agreed.

“And what if I told you that I didn’t want this after all?  That it was a failed experiment; that I was mistaken about the nature of my feelings for you?”

“I would say that you were lying,” Thor answered, as kindly as he could, letting not a hint of accusation slip into his tone.

“And if I were not lying?” Loki pressed, his voice trembling.

“Then I would have to let you go,” Thor said, almost choking on the words.

“But I am a liar.”  Loki’s voice broke on the last word.

“What do you want, Loki?” Thor asked him, gentle but insistent.

“I want you,” Loki said hoarsely.  “I want a magic dagger that will never miss its mark.  I want all the knowledge in all the books in the world to be instantly deposited in my mind.”  Thor gave him a sad half-smile, reaching out to stroke his hair again.  “I want to be someone else,” Loki whispered.  “Someone good and strong and happy.”

“Don’t say that, ever,” Thor said firmly, gripping the back of Loki’s neck in that familiar gesture of protectiveness, of support.  “I would never have you be anything other than you are.”

“No?  Then you do not wish that I were not your brother?” Loki asked, eyebrows raised.

“No, I do not wish that,” Thor replied sincerely, lacing his fingers into Loki’s hair and running his thumb along the line of his jaw.  “I would never wish that.”

Loki laughed darkly, a little wildly.  “Then we are truly mad, and truly lost.”

“Perhaps,” said Thor.  “But what do you want?” he asked again, ever patient.

“I want you to fuck me,” Loki said flatly.

Thor smiled, a little sadly; he recognized that Loki had the impulse to be cruel to himself, and when he did, it was Thor’s task to be kind to him.  “Not yet,” he said.  “First things first.  We can work our way up to it.”  Loki did not protest that they would never do this again, so no, they would not be working their way up to anything; Thor wondered if this gave him reason for hope.

He took Loki’s cock in his hand again, and found it starting to soften.  He reached over to the small chest of drawers that sat beside his bed and pulled out a small glass jar of salve that he kept for just this purpose, opened it, and took up a generous dollop with his fingers.  Then, slowly, gently, he started to stroke up and down Loki’s length, spreading the salve evenly over it and his hand, lingering at the tip to carefully pull back the foreskin and caress the head.

Loki whimpered and panted, clutching at the coverlet.  He started to throw his head back, and Thor’s free hand caught him before the back of his head struck the carved wooden headboard, then eased him back down into a reclining position.  Thor lay on his side alongside his brother, his right hand reaching over his hip to keep stroking him, his left hand cradling the back of his neck, fingers twining idly in his hair.  Loki squeezed his eyes shut, whining deep in his throat, and tilted his head back (now that there was no danger of hitting it), fully exposing the length of his slender white neck.  Struck by its beauty, Thor leaned over to kiss the side of it, to lick up the sweat starting to gather in the hollow of Loki’s throat; then he moved up to place light kisses on Loki’s tightly closed eyelids, along the strong curves of his cheekbones, and on the bony arch of his nose.

By now Loki was all but sobbing, his back arching as he thrust into Thor’s hand, his bare feet pushing restlessly at the surface of the bed.  Thor murmured soothingly as he ran his lips softly over Loki’s forehead.  “It’s—I can’t—” Loki choked out, his fingers working more desperately at the coverlet beneath him.

“Do you need me to stop?” Thor asked, pausing in his ministrations to look down at Loki’s face with concern.

Loki forced his eyes open; his irises formed just the slimmest ring of blue-green around his pupils.  “Don’t you dare,” he gritted out between his teeth.

Thor laughed and kissed his hair and began moving his hand again; and it was just a few moments before Loki’s hands clenched into tight fists, his toes curled, his back arched higher than ever, and he came, leaving a sheen of pearly white fluid on Thor’s fingers and small puddles of it on his own stomach and chest.  He collapsed back onto the bed, panting, his whole body limp, and ran his hands roughly over his face and through his hair.

“Are you all right?” Thor asked, still combing his fingers through Loki’s hair at the base of his skull.

“I should say so,” Loki said with a weak laugh.  He raised his head to survey the mess he had made, then vanished it with a lazy wave of his hand.  _That’s a useful trick,_ Thor mused.  _If you’re going to have an illicit affair, always do it with a seiðmaðr…_

“What do you want to do?” Thor asked once more.  He was keenly aware of Loki’s inexperience in these matters, and didn’t want to push him farther than he was ready to go.  “Do you want to leave now, or stay awhile?”

“What about you?” Loki asked, casting a significant glance at Thor’s obvious erection, which had been intensified by the act, and the sight, of bringing Loki to completion.

“Don’t worry about me—I can take care of myself,” Thor said with an amused quirk of his mouth.

“I want to—take care of you,” Loki said, with a little smile at Thor’s circumlocution.  “But I’m afraid I wouldn’t know how to do it very well.”

“Let me show you, then.”  Thor took Loki’s hand and wrapped it around his cock, then wrapped his hand around Loki’s to guide it.  In some ways it was like bringing himself off, since he was controlling the pace and the motions, but the feeling of Loki’s long, slender fingers against his flesh, and—even more powerfully—the _knowledge_ that it was Loki’s hand touching him, not his own, heightened the pleasure immeasurably.  It would have been easy to close his eyes and give in to it, but he wanted to watch Loki’s face, and found himself captivated by the play of emotions over it: wonder, pride, disbelief, all shadowed by an overarching sorrow that Thor could perceive, but could not explain.

Loki must have felt Thor’s eyes on him, because he blushed and looked away self-consciously.  Thor used his left hand, still cradling Loki’s neck, to guide his face back toward his own, then leaned down to kiss him again—slow and tender, this time, without the urgent desperation that had tinged their previous kisses, but with the hunger still unabated.  Thor bit down hard on Loki’s lip as he came, so that they both half-moaned, half-whimpered into the other’s mouth.

They parted, panting; Thor rolled off Loki so that they lay side by side, and Loki cleaned them both up with another wave of his hand.

“How do you do that?” Thor asked curiously.  It was a _very_ useful trick.

“I move the—debris—into a pocket dimension.”

“So… somewhere there’s a pocket dimension full of semen and dirt and blood and whatever else you need to clean up in a hurry?”

Loki made a snorting sound in his throat.  “No, I collapse the dimension as soon as I’ve put the dirt in it.”

“So it’s just… gone?”  Thor was deeply impressed.

“More or less,” said Loki.

“Huh.”

They lay side by side, their breathing gradually slowing and quieting.  In the silence they could hear that the storm outside had broken and rain had begun to fall.  Thor might have felt inclined to sleep, but he wanted to savor the feeling of lying beside Loki like this, listening to the sound of his breath, running just the tips of his fingers through his hair.

“I’ve made a terrible mistake,” Loki said suddenly, breaking the enchanted silence.

Thor’s stomach clenched, and his fingers stopped moving.  “After all, then, did you not want this—want me?”

“Of course I did—I do.  But I should not have kissed you, last night.  I should not have let my desires come to light.”

“Then—you wish this had not happened between us?”  It made his chest ache just to say it.

“Yes,” Loki said, softly but without hesitation.

 “Didn’t you… didn’t you enjoy it?” Thor asked, his brow furrowed, his voice almost plaintive.

Loki’s laugh had little humor in it.  “‘Enjoy’… the word feels out of place.  Like trying to trap a wildfire in a lantern.”

“Why, then?” Thor pressed.

“Wouldn’t you sacrifice one happy memory to save yourself an agonizing future?”

Thor considered it.  “I don’t know,” he said slowly.  “I don’t think so.”

This time Loki’s humorless laugh was tinged with bitterness.  “If you are to be king, you must learn to sacrifice the good of a few for the good of all.”

“Perhaps it is you who should be king, not I,” Thor said quietly.  He had never said it aloud before.

Loki snorted again.  “I’ll be sure to bring that up with the Norns when they come to give me my magic dagger.”

Thor resumed stroking Loki’s hair, wishing he could smooth away all the bitterness in Loki’s heart.  There was a deep well of sadness and anger in him that Thor barely understood, and had not even seen until half a century ago.  “How long have you known?” he asked abruptly.

Loki did not have to ask what he meant.  “Since I was old enough to be aware of such desires, I have known that I wanted you and no one else.”

“Then you wish that I had never known how you felt, or how I felt.  And that _you_ had never known I returned your desire.”

“Yes,” Loki said again, simple and full of regret.

“I never thought you would be one to shy away from knowledge,” Thor chided him, trying to keep his tone light.  “Even if that knowledge may have painful consequences.”

“Ah, who’s the serpent now?” Loki said with a sly smile.

“Serpent…?  Loki, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Thor said irritably.

“An ancient and widely known Midgardian tale,” Loki said.  “The first man and woman lived in a garden called Paradise, where all their needs were provided for by a benevolent god.”  When Loki said the word _Paradise,_ the All-tongue supplied Thor with a wealth of connotations: in many Midgardian languages, it had come to mean a place of perfect happiness, and sometimes the place where the souls of the worthy went after death, much like _Valhalla_ in their own language.

Loki continued: “But this god warned them not to eat the fruit of the tree in the center of the garden, or they would die.  The serpent came to the woman and told her that if she and the man ate the fruit, they would become like gods, knowing good and evil; and the god who created them had commanded them not to eat it only because he feared that they would become his rivals.  So she and the man ate the fruit, and they became ashamed of their nakedness; and when they confessed their disobedience to their god, he banished them from the garden, and condemned the serpent to crawl on his belly and eat the dust.”

“They learned that nakedness was evil?” Thor asked, puzzled.

Loki rolled his eyes.  “Sex, Thor.  It’s about sex.  Eating the fruit taught them that sex was evil… at least under most circumstances.”

“It sounds like a very foolish tale, then,” Thor remarked.

“Enshrining the morality of custom by attributing it to a divine source is a very common stratagem, historically,” Loki pointed out.  “And very effective—for a time, at least.  But what happens to the morality when people no longer believe in the god?”

“Probably nothing,” Thor said, surprised.  “Customs are very slow to change.”

“Yes, probably,” Loki agreed.  “But Nietzsche imagines a second innocence: not the absence of customs, for that would mean chaos; but the knowledge that the morality of custom is just that—custom, contingent and changeable, and not the eternal, divinely decreed law of good and evil.”

“So the ‘knowledge’ of good and evil would be defeated by the knowledge of what morality really is.”

“Yes, precisely.”  Loki gave him a radiant smile; Thor savored the way it brightened his face and made him look a hundred years younger (and privately delighted in the knowledge that he had elicited it without any assistance from cannabis).  _“‘Where the tree of knowledge stands, there is always Paradise’: thus speak the oldest and the youngest serpents.”_

“Well, there you have it,” Thor said in a mock-triumphant tone.

“Yes, there I have it.”  The smile Loki gave him now had sadness in it, and Thor still did not know what that sadness meant: whether Loki would turn him away in the future, would hold himself aloof.  “And I have this also,” Loki added: _“Whatever is done from love always occurs beyond good and evil.”_

**Author's Note:**

> The Nietzsche quotes at the end are _Beyond Good and Evil_ sections 152 and 153, respectively. They may not seem related, but I think it's important that they're consecutive.
> 
> The bit about the _ens realissimum_ is a reference to a medieval and early modern (i.e., up to the mid-1700s) conception of God as the "most real being," who possesses the maximum degree of all "perfections," or all positive qualities: i.e., wisdom, power, benevolence, love, justice, etc. The little joke about Kant and real oppositions is a reference to Immanuel Kant's 1763 essay "An Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy," in which Kant argues that Leibniz's argument that the being described by the concept of God is possible (part of his argument for God's existence) doesn't work. Leibniz's argument is that if the _ens realissimum_ possesses only positive qualities, it must be self-consistent, because it could not contain a quality and its negation, and anything that is not self-contradictory is possible. Kant points out that there could be "real oppositions" (as contrasted with "logical oppositions"): qualities that are not logically contradictory, but nonetheless could not coexist in the same subject. As an example to illustrate this concept he uses motion in opposite directions (i.e., positive and negative velocity relative to some coordinate system).
> 
> If I haven't scared you away with my unbelievable dorkiness, please do take a look at my other fics featuring philosopher!Loki.


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